FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT FISH

My 5-year-old came home last week with her first kindergarten assignment: "Personalize a shoe box. " She was ecstatic. Felt like such a big girl. On Monday, she found the box and stuck white paper all over it. On Tuesday, she painted it blue. On Wednesday, she added an obscene amount of glitter glue and suddenly realized that the inside of the box looked like it was covered in sand. Thursday brought schools of bright fish and her choice to cut out the fish she previously drew into her works of art. At one point, she started crying because her mixture of blue-and-white paint didn't come out quite the shade of blue she'd envisioned.

NEWPORT BEACH — How many boys does it take to catch a near record-breaking opah fish off Crystal Cove? The answer is three: Randall Hause, 17, Daniel Segerblom, 15, and Sean Segerblom, 12, all of Newport Beach. And they've just about eaten all of the edible meat from the 143-pound catch, dishing it out to friends and neighbors and indulging in a little bit of it themselves. They say it melts in the mouth, kind of like butter. The opah is a deepwater fish more typically caught in Hawaii.

NEWPORT BEACH — Unusually cold Pacific Ocean waters off Southern California have put a damper on sportfishing, leaving many anglers walking away from fishing boats empty-handed, if not outright despondent. Even some of the locals are starting to reconsider their daily jaunts down to the shore to surf cast off Balboa Peninsula. Fresh from a successful fishing vacation off of Cape Cod, Alex Bassinne, a regular fisherman down near the Wedge, said he's getting a tad frustrated at continually reeling in nothing.

Two fishermen were charged Thursday with misdemeanors for allegedly catching a critically endangered giant black sea bass off the Balboa Pier in January, prosecutors said. The fish they hauled in measured 62 inches long (more than five feet) and weighed between 140 and 200 pounds, authorities had determined. John Francis Brady, 45, from Huntington Beach, and Jonathan Paul Apothaker, 45, from Valley Village, face up to six months in jail on misdemanor possession of a black sea bass, which is listed as critically endangered in California by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Two fishermen were charged Thursday with misdemeanors for allegedly catching a rare giant black sea bass off the Balboa Pier in January, prosecutors said. The fish they hauled in measured 62 inches long and weighed 140 to 200 pounds, authorities said. John Francis Brady, 45, from Huntington Beach, and Jonathan Paul Apothaker, 45, from Valley Village, face up to six months in jail on misdemeanor possession of a black sea bass, which is listed as critically endangered in California by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

To kick off the summer sports fishing season, Newport Beach-based Pacific Coast Sportfishing Magazine is hosting its first salt-water fishing festival Friday and Saturday at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. The two-day event will feature more than 30 vendors and exhibitors with the latest products and techniques used in salt-water sport fishing. Although the event will be similar to a convention, the atmosphere will be anything but convention-like, said Drew Lawler, the magazine's president and editorial director.

A fter the baseball or soccer game this weekend, take the family to Lions Park for the 63rd Fish Fry sponsored by the Costa Mesa-Newport Harbor Lions Club. Besides deep-fried cod and fries, there will be hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie, popcorn, sodas and more. There will be a baby contest, a variety of music from the main stage and good old family fun carnival rides and games for kids of all ages. Saturday's activities begin at noon and go until 9 p.m., while Sunday's activities begin at noon and go until 6:30 p.m. or when all the fish are gone!

And now for something completely different: Nhu Y Ca 8 Mon, a Vietnamese restaurant posing as a quaint little cottage with a deer head in the foyer, leading to a faux indoor garden replete with faux trees, Christmas lights, faux foliage and booths surrounded by faux trellises dripping with faux flowers. There is also a very fancy VIP room complete with karaoke bar, which is available to all diners unless there is a special event. Even more unusual is its signature dinner featuring eight courses of fish.

Legendary Newport Beach dory fisherman Shorty Gunther once hooked a 580-pound swordfish and had a St. Bernard that was trained to rescue swimmers in distress at local beaches. Tales of how Gunther powered his boat with a salvaged airplane engine survived long after Gunther last fished off Newport Beach. Gunther had a knack for catching fish. He set a record for catching black sea bass during the 1926 season, the Times reported on Nov. 13 of that year, catching 67 of the massive fish, all weighing between 200 pounds to 800 pounds.